Quick & Healthy: Fitter, Happier, More Delicious

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“Quick & Healthy” offers some highlights from the world of health and wellness you may have missed this week:

Power naps are not only a great away to restore your energy — they may provide an additional memory boost. In a recent German study, participants who took a 90-minute snooze were more successful at retaining recently learned information than participants who stayed up and watched a movie.

Researchers trying to make chocolate healthier and more delicious are showing results. By using a technique known as “pulp preconditioning,” in which cocoa pods are placed in storage for a week before processing, as well as adjusting the temperatures and timing of roasting the beans, they are finding new ways to let the finished chocolate retain more of the flavorful and nutritious antioxidants.

Everything old is new again. The phenomenon of “minimalist” running is yet another back-to-basics fad, in which joggers try to approximate the way our ancestors ran — namely, barefoot. Doctors are cautioning that older runners who want to take up the barefoot running craze would be advised to transition slowly to avoid injury.

Glysophate, the world’s most widely used weed killer and a bastion of Big Agra, is “probably carcinogenic to humans,” according to a new report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Monsanto has been distributing glysophate under the trade name Roundup since the 1970s, and predictably has disputed the report.